


A Scandal in Wallachia

by farrah_yondale



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Babies, Childbirth, F/M, Funny, Pregnancy, Shenanigans, Sypha's 9 month old sets Alucard's hair on fire, Trevor and Alucard attempt a ritual and it goes horribly awry who would have guessed, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21611941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farrah_yondale/pseuds/farrah_yondale
Summary: Trevor and Alucard look after Sypha’s children while she sets off to fight back a curse plaguing a neighboring village.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya & Trevor Belmont & Sypha Belnades, Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Comments: 6
Kudos: 65





	A Scandal in Wallachia

“Demon,” Trevor Belmont vows, squeezing the aforementioned lifeform between his hands. “Today I will thwart you.”

The demon wriggling in his grasp is of a fleshy, more human-like variety than what he normally grapples with. It’s about the size of a raccoon and makes hideous gurgling noises as it regurgitates food particles and snot. It giggles.

“Trevor, stop calling our daughter that.”

Sypha rips through the living room and tears Chaviva out of Trevor’s grasp. She seems to be trying to minimize the amount of contact between him and his daughter in some futile hope that it might keep him from being magically electrocuted in the long run.

Chaviva babbles and kicks her feet excitedly in her mother’s grasp.

Sypha looks reluctant to let go of her child, even more so of leaving her husband behind. Only when Elder Iolanda pops her aged face from behind the threshold of their home does she even consider handing Chaviva back to Trevor.

“Sypha,” the old woman starts, not unkindly. She seems to be considering what collection of words will convince Sypha quickest of following her out into the wild. “Come now. If we tarry any longer, it’ll be impossible to undo the curse.”

Sypha glances once at her, huffs. Then clamps both of Trevor’s cheeks between her hands and kisses his forehead fiercely.

It’s a swift kiss, but Sypha’s hands linger over his cheeks. She looks like she’s trying to memorize every line of his face like it’s one of her myths.

“You look like you’re about to send me off into battle,” Trevor teases.

“I might as well be.”

“Oh, come on. I know how to take care of a child.”

“It’s not the children I’m worried about. It’s you. If I come home and find an ice sculpture instead of my husband…”

“We fought Dracula’s armies, love. I’ll be fine.”

“Dracula’s armies had full control of their powers. And our goal was to kill or maim them. You can’t whip out Chaviva’s eye or finger if she tries to set you alight. Don’t whip my daughter,” she adds more fiercely.

“I’m not going to whip our daughter!” Trevor protests. “You have no faith in me, woman.”

“I do not.”

Trevor pouts.

Sypha laughs and appeases him with a kiss on the cheek.

“Be good,” she says, pointing to Chaviva, as if the nine month old can even understand what she’s saying. “Do _not_ kill your father.”

Chaviva giggles at the prospect of patricide.

Sypha hangs for another second at the doorway.

“Go,” Trevor urges. “Alucard’s coming to help in a few days, anyway. If Chaviva manages to kill me, I’m sure he’ll figure out some way to bring me back from the dead before you come home.”

Sypha tucks her legs underneath herself. It would be fine, she assured herself. Plenty of non-magical parents had raised magical children in the past without incident. Trevor would be fine. He’d be fine.

The Elder sits beside Sypha and the fire and smiles wide.

“Did I tell you about the time you almost scorched your grandfather from the inside out when you were eight months old?”

“Oh my God,” Sypha cries, standing up abruptly. “I’m returning home _this instant_.”

“Sypha, dear.” The Elder’s hand snaps to Sypha’s wrist and tugs her back down. “Relax. I’m trying to set your mind at ease.”

“With all due respect, Elder, I don’t see how that’s supposed to set my mind at ease.”

“That’s the problem with you young folk,” Iolanda admonishes as a tease. “You only listen to half of what your elders say and then blame us when something goes awry. _Sit down_ ,” she adds when Sypha is still half-fighting her to stand.

Sypha looks thoroughly rebuked and sits with a frown on her face.

“Now listen,” the Elder begins again. “When you were eight months old, you could have easily killed your grandfather with magic, but you didn’t. No child ever does. Do you know why?”

“No,” Sypha admits. She had meant to research that and feels guilty she doesn’t know. But all the complications during her pregnancy and the stresses of raising two children at once had left her with little time to peruse Speaker myth or Belmont literature to give her an idea. She tucks her chin back between her knees.

“Because children _know_. They have control over their powers to an extent. You know so yourself. Magic is according to your intent. Young children don’t have much of an intent, but they never intend to hurt their loved ones. And the older they are, the more control they have. If you didn’t manage to kill your grandfather at eight months, your child won’t do anything to her own father at nine.”

Sypha smiles, a little pitifully, but she’s convinced. At least for the moment. Even if Elder Iolanda was lying or making up stories to pass the time, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Sypha had decided to help break this curse, and she wouldn’t turn back now. And it would be an insult to Trevor to do so.

She had to have faith in him.

Sypha had been gone for about thirty minutes when Chaviva set something on fire.

Thankfully, Trevor wasn’t a stranger to children setting things on fire and had it contained quickly. His nine month old had decided she didn’t like the chair Trevor was sitting on, because it meant she got less attention from her father and so had set it on fire.

Trevor picks up his daughter and listens to her giggle in triumph.

“I don’t know if this makes you daddy’s girl or if it just makes you a sociopath.” Trevor swallows adding, “Like your mother,” because some part of him is afraid Chaviva will somehow understand and take offense to it, and Sypha really _would_ return to an ice sculpture instead of her husband.

Regardless of this newfound information about his daughter, she’s in dire need of a nappy change. And while her twin brother has spent all his alone time with his father asleep in his crib, he assumes Isa will need one, too.

He imagines he’ll have to wrestle Chaviva to change her nappy and decides to deal with Isa first.

He places Chaviva in the cot with a warning glance. Chaviva looks up at her father like she’s never done anything worthy of guilt. Normally, this would be accompanied by a crude admonishment like, “Watch it, you little shit,” or “You’re a tiny little bastard, aren’t you?” and would then be rebuked by Sypha. But his wife isn’t here to rebuke him and he genuinely feels guilty without her here. It’s only funny when Sypha’s here.

Trevor sighs and leans over the crib. “I miss your mother.”

Chaviva wiggles in her bed.

But he swallows that longing and finds something to occupy Chaviva’s attention for the few brief seconds he goes to pull Isa out of his crib. Isa is awake now, but unlike his sister, he rarely ever cried or cooed for attention. He could have been laying there for hours staring at the ceiling in quiet.

“You’re clearly possessed by a tired old grandmother and your sister is the devil incarnate.” Trevor sighs. “What did I expect from Sypha’s children, honestly? Although,” he adds, laying his son across the table. Isa doesn’t protest. “I can’t really complain about you. At least you aren’t capable of freezing all my toes off because I took away your favorite chew-toy.”

Isa stares up at his father and blinks sleepily.

Trevor leaves him there to pick Chaviva out of her crib. He could rely on Isa at least to not roll off the table, since Isa clearly had no desire to move, ever.

Chaviva, unfortunately, seems to be able to understand the lack of her mother’s presence and begins to scream in protest when Trevor lays her beside her brother for a nappy change. She wasn’t usually so difficult, but she’s been moody without her mother. He wonders if it has anything at all to do with magic, if Sypha’s absence affects the way Chaviva’s magic feels. Sypha had explained to him before that she dampened the effects of her daughter’s haywire magical manifestations, but he wondered if it affected how Chaviva _felt_ that magic. Or maybe Chaviva was just being a moody baby.

Given the woman he married, though, he seriously doubts it could be something as simple as that and pouts to himself.

“Chaviva, why can’t you be more like your brother? He’s so well-behaved. Look at him.”

Isa pees on him.

Trevor sighs.

God, he missed Sypha.

“You failed to mention the curse would be on a woman.”

Sypha and Iolanda sit legs folded underneath them over the body of said woman. She lays supine, her face ash-gray, hair a mess of dark tangles, hands folded in her dress. The only thing to indicate she’s alive at all is the slight rise and fall of her chest every few seconds.

“When I followed you,” Sypha continues, voice even. It cuts through the silence like light in a dense fog. “I came under the assumption that we were subduing a cursed object…or a cursed place. Not a human. That requires more…”

“Precision,” Iolanda finishes for her.

“And that’s why you asked specifically for me.” Sypha places a hand on the floorboard, pushes herself to standing.

“I know no one else who’s as focused as you are with magic.” Iolanda watches as Sypha kneels at the head of the woman’s makeshift bed. “I’m here to assist you. Should you fail, and this poor girl dies, I can at least pull you back and keep you alive.”

“Do we know the origins of this curse? A jealous eye, a neighbor who might have sought to charm her?”

Iolanda shakes her head. “As far as we know…there is no origin at all. She seems to have fallen into this state suddenly.”

“It’s a powerful curse.” That much is obvious. Whoever or whatever did this could very well kill Sypha in the process of her undoing it.

Iolanda hesitates. “Do you—”

“No,” Sypha answers flatly, knowing what she means to say. “I can do it.”

One more day. _One more day till Alucard gets here_ , Trevor tries to remind himself when he wakes up to the smell of smoke and Chaviva screeching for his attention.

Trevor sits up abruptly, wide awake. Something’s on fire, and he’s not sure if he should be more concerned about the fire or the fact that this is becoming a regular occurrence.

In the duration of his nap—because, frankly, Trevor could not sleep more than a few hours with this terror his wife had summoned through some demonic portal from her vagina—Chaviva had apparently learned how to climb, or float, or teleport through her crib, because she sat eagerly beside the dining table, clapping her hands together at a skinned chicken she had just set on fire.

Trevor had so many questions, but all he did was pinch the bridge of his nose and sigh.

He had to at least be grateful it wasn’t something more flammable. And that Chaviva had at least cooked him breakfast during this night’s bout of chaos.

“You want to eat that?” he asks, picking her up. Chaviva stares at her own clapping hands and ignores him. “You’re too young for that. God,” he adds, grabbing a cloth and smacking out the fire. “If you’re this awful now, I can only imagine how you’ll be when you’re old enough to hate me.”

Chaviva tries to shove her finger in Trevor’s mouth.

“No,” Trevor admonishes, jerking his head to the side. “Daddy’s tongue is not food.”

Isa is still asleep in his crib, but Trevor doesn’t want to leave him there all by himself. He has laundry to do, and Trevor may not have been a shining beacon of common sense like his wife, but he knows it’s probably not a good idea to leave one catatonic infant and one chaotic infant in the same room without supervision.

Chaviva is the first he sets outside, surrounded by cushions and whatever else he can throw together to keep her from crawling into a river and drowning. Thankfully, she’s behaving a little more this morning, so when Trevor returns to set Isa beside her, she’s sitting still and paying more attention to her hands than getting into trouble.

Trevor touches his hand to robes hanging from the clothesline.

“They’re still wet,” he complains. He frowns and turns back to his children to find another chore to take of when Chaviva claps her hands together. For a minute, he’s afraid Chaviva’s just burned up the few clothes in his and Sypha’s possession, but when he turns back, the clothes are still intact and dry.

“You dried them for me,” Trevor says, impressed. “Thank you.” He leans down to give Chaviva a kiss on the cheek. She giggles and slaps either side of Trevor’s face playfully.

“And you,” he adds to Isa, who’s splayed out like a frog on a cushion. “You’re completely useless but you’re nine months, so I’ll forgive you.” He kisses Isa’s sleeping face. Isa smiles in his sleep.

Trevor turns back to the laundry and begins to pry everything off the clothespins. At least the weather is warm and pleasant, and he doesn’t have to worry about the kids getting chill in this weather. Sypha did say they needed sunlight to stay healthy.

Trevor pulls down on a blanket and finds Alucard’s face behind it.

“You look terrible.”

He might have been surprised at Alucard’s sudden appearance if it hadn’t been his usual method of greeting over the last few years. Trevor glares and then folds the blanket over his arm to pile with the rest of his clothes.

“Thanks. You’re early.”

Alucard ignores his weary response and leans down to pick up Chaviva who’s stretching her arms out excitedly towards him. She coos and grabs at Alucard’s hair.

“She’s beautiful.” Alucard marvels at their daughter for about half a second before she sets his hair on fire. The sentiment evaporates along with the ends of Alucard’s hair. He jumps back and yelps, something Trevor would have found endlessly hilarious if he hadn’t just dropped Chaviva in surprise. Trevor dives and catches Chaviva before she hits the floor and he gives Alucard a glare.

“Try not to kill my children when you’re supposed to be helping me babysit them. Some of us are full-blooded humans and can’t float to safety.”

“Are you sure you haven’t already killed this one?” Alucard ignores his request, smothering the embers on his chest and leaning over Isa who’s still out cold.

“They’re Sypha’s children,” Trevor responds, as if that’s supposed to explain everything.

“That much is obvious,” Alucard replies drily. “They’re too cute to have taken after you.”

“If you’re done being a bastard—” Trevor deposits Chaviva back into Alucard’s arms. He gives Trevor a reluctant glance, and if Trevor weren’t so tired, he might have reprimanded him for backing out on his promise to babysit. “—go inside and feed the babies while I finish up the laundry.”

Alucard frowns but does as he’s told, leaning down to gather Isa up in his other arm while Chaviva shovels all his hair into her mouth.

No. _No, no, no._

This girl’s mind is like a maze. Utterly confusing. Winding in ways not even Sypha can keep track of. But she knows instinctually, and from all the other minds she’s traversed, that this is not her normal state. It’s probably part of the curse, but not knowing its origins only makes it more difficult to solve.

Sypha returns back to her seat beside Elder Iolanda gasping, like she’d just broken through the surface of the ocean. The Elder presses a hand to Sypha’s back to steady her.

Sypha lets out a noise of frustration and collapses spread-eagled on her back.

“You young people have no patience,” the Elder chides.

Sypha’s used to the admonishment of her Elders and closes her eyes in response. Her mind wanders briefly to her children. She wonders if Alucard has arrived to help Trevor yet. If either of them are still alive. The thought only makes her more frustrated. Before her children had been born, her mind wandered to far-off countries and fantastical adventures. Now all she thought of was her children, her _home_. It wasn’t right.

Sypha rolls over on her stomach and begins to pick at a loose thread on the carpet.

“What’s wrong, Sypha?”

She rolls back and sits up into a cross-legged position.

“I’m thinking of… _home_ ,” Sypha says with contempt.

“Now what’s wrong with that?”

“Because!” Sypha bursts out, leaning her arms on her ankles. “I’m a Speaker! I’m not supposed to have a home.”

The Elder gives Sypha a sympathetic glance. “You don’t like it?”

She tries to think of what to say. Maybe it was the stress and all the wild hormones and blood pressure that had her in a foul mood over the subject lately. When Trevor and she settled into that cottage almost two years ago, she never expected they’d be stuck there for so long.

“I didn’t think…” she starts, trying to think of the right words. “It would be so difficult for us to travel and take care of children. And all my complications during and after the pregnancy…I just feel like I lost two years I could have spent traveling! And I _want_ my children to travel with me. It’s just…all I keep thinking about right now is _them_. I never realized how much of my mind lately had been focused on just…”

Elder Iolanda seems to take some offense in Sypha’s words and puts her hands on her hips. “Now, you know you can be a mother and a renowned magician at the same time, right? Is that what this is about?”

“I _know_ that,” Sypha protests. “I just have…feelings.”

That makes the Elder burst into laughter. She clasps a hand on Sypha’s back and gives her an encouraging smile. “You had a rough pregnancy, Sypha. It’s fine for you to have been in one place for a while. Just give your children a little more time, and you and Trevor can start on the road again.”

Sypha straightens herself from a slouch and shakes herself. “All right.” She sighs and focuses her attention back to the unconscious girl in front of them. “I’m going to get it this time.”

Trevor’s probably lucky Alucard doesn’t sleep, because he can only imagine how obnoxious he’d be deprived of it. It’s Chaviva screaming and bawling in her cot that wakes Trevor to sitting immediately.

Trevor rubs his eyes.

When Sypha’s here, they take turns looking after the children. But Alucard, despite his infinite wisdom on the occult or whatever else smart shit Trevor doesn’t understand, is a complete buffoon when it comes to babies. It still hasn’t sunk into him that regular human infants can’t heal fractured bone in a matter of seconds and that throwing them against a wall isn’t going to build anything except reasons for Sypha to immediately end the Tepes line.

(For the record, Alucard had _not_ thrown either of Sypha’s children against the wall, but something he’d said earlier certainly implied that he thought it was something he could do before Trevor gave him a glare.)

Trevor would find Alucard’s incompetence hilarious, actually, if it weren’t responsible for worsening his headaches. He cowers in the corner like an admonished dog—actually, the comparison to a dog is relevant, since he’s literally doing that right now.

“ _What_ are you doing?” Trevor snaps to Alucard’s wolf form.

“I’m a werewolf,” Alucard says over Chaviva’s crying.

“No you’re not.”

“I was bit by a werewolf recently and I’m a werewolf now.”

“It’s not even the full moon, Alucard.”

“I’m a werewolf,” Alucard insists.

Without Sypha’s presence and with sleep deprivation, however, it’s hard for Trevor to find any humor at all at the situation. “Listen, you fucking baby—” Alucard visibly flinches at the sudden flare in Trevor’s temper. “–I’ve been on a grand total of five hours of sleep for the last week taking care of two children, one of which is magical and can kill grown men with her eyes, and that’s already hard enough as it is, but I’m pretty sure Sypha didn’t call you over so that you could act like a third useless baby. You’re here to help, _so fucking help_.”

Amidst his rant, Trevor realized he’d become breathless and that Chaviva had stopped crying in her crib.

She coos up at her father.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Trevor says wearily, picking her up.

Chaviva leans in and kisses his cheek. And all of Trevor’s exhaustion evaporates at the gesture. He wants to marvel at how his nine-month old can tell he’s stressed, and does whatever she can to help alleviate it somewhat.

Which is more than he can say for Alucard.

Who transforms, at the very least.

“I can feed them and clothe them.” He speaks with surprising deliberation given his usual attitude towards Trevor. “But I’m not their father. When Chaviva starts crying, all she wants is you.”

“That would be so cute if I weren’t currently thinking of all the ways I could skin you and sell you for baby clothes.”

Even Alucard, at some point, seemed to have realized that prodding Trevor in his current state was useless. He ignores him. “How have you survived the last nine months with her like this?”

“She’s not usually like this. She usually sleeps through the night, but it’s on Sypha’s arm.” When Alucard looks to him for a further explanation, Trevor continues, “I don’t sleep with the kids because I’m afraid I’ll roll over and smother them.”

“Well, if it helps, I can watch over you while you sleep and make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“That’s the creepiest thing you’ve ever said to me, but you know what? I’m too tired to care.” Trevor clambers back into bed and tucks Chaviva next to him. “Just make sure I don’t, because if I accidentally kill Chaviva, I’ll kill you, and then Sypha will kill me.”

Alucard smiles. “I have full confidence your daughter will set the entire house on fire before she lets you kill her. But yes, I will…try to endure your disgusting face for the next few hours.”

Trevor says nothing to that because he’s asleep before he hears the last of Alucard’s words.

With her mind now focused, Sypha wanders this plane as easily as she might have strolled the catacombs. There’s the threat of traps or injury, but it’s no longer a maze with her vision clear. Having been in Dracula’s castle and acquainted with Speaker myth, she was used to odd things. The floor beneath her is black as night, the walls the same, but with a faint enough glow for her to see the passage before her clearly. She knows she’s reached her destination only when she spots a pillar in the center of the room. At its peak hovers a stone, spinning erratically on its axis.

“Hmm,” Sypha says and prods it before realizing that’s probably a bad idea.

The ground shakes and knocks Sypha off her feet. She lets out a yelp, colliding with the hard floor. Before she can stand again, however, the ground opens up beneath her to a void of black.

“She’s very stressed. Magically speaking, of course.”

Alucard stares at Trevor’s nine-month old like she’s a puzzle that needs to be solved or a dilemma that needs to be breached. Like she’s one of the demons in Dracula’s castle that needs to be figured out and subdued.

“What exactly does that mean?”

“It means Sypha’s been keeping a lid over your daughter’s magical powers. She’s not here, so naturally Chaviva’s powers overflow, go awry. She’s stressed and doesn’t know what to do with it all, so it comes out erratically. Thankfully, I know of a ritual that might help.” Alucard ends the conversation by shuffling back into the house.

“A ritual?” Trevor follows him, leaving the door open to keep an eye on the kids.

But when Alucard says nothing, Trevor continues, “Listen, Alucard, I might be an idiot.” Alucard gives him a glare like he wants to say something, but Trevor continues on undeterred. “But I’ve learned a thing or two from living with Sypha for the last couple of years, and I’m not performing a ritual on my child.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Alucard assures.

“Yeah, well— _Chaviva, no!_ ”

Trevor dashes out the door, nearly barreling Alucard over in the process. There’s a _snake_ in her hands, and before Trevor can ask himself how she managed to do that in the few seconds he’d been looking away, Chaviva sets it on fire.

Trevor’s relieved for about a millisecond before Chaviva starts to bawl in distress. The ground around her suddenly lights on fire, and Trevor has to pick her up and stomp on the flames to keep the two of them from going up in smoke.

“Okay,” Trevor gasps, making his way back to Alucard. He presses Chaviva to his shoulder and tries to hush her sobs with pats on her back. “What’s this ritual?”

Forty minutes and a series of suspicious drawings on the floor later, Alucard finally steps back and loiters enough for Trevor to know he’s finished.

Chaviva sits at the center of Alucard’s circle, clapping her hands excitedly.

Trevor points a threatening finger at Alucard. “If she so much as loses a single hair off her head, I will actually succeed in staking you this time.”

Alucard brushes his finger aside. “She’ll be fine. It’s a spell,” he adds as an explanation, as if that makes it any better. _Of course_ , it’s a spell, or Trevor wouldn’t have agreed to Alucard fumbling around with his daughter on the line.

And in the end, this was all really just to protect _her_ , right?

“Just hurry up and do it,” Trevor says when Alucard opens his mouth to explain further.

Alucard kneels down, and as he murmurs something, the seal lights up. Trevor remembers the time Sypha opened up the door to the Belmont hold and wonders momentarily if it’s in the same language. The glowing letters certainly look similar enough, but he finds himself disappointed that he hadn’t bothered to learn any of this over the years with Sypha.

He’s pulled out of his thoughts when Chaviva goes limp.

“Chaviva!”

Trevor knocks Alucard to the side and dives for his daughter. She’s breathing, and he can feel the little pulse in her thigh with his fingers, but she doesn’t wake or respond at all to his calls of her name.

He swivels around to Alucard, who, God bless him, actually looks rather meek and terrified at the moment. He shrinks like a kitten at the sight of Trevor’s furious face.

“What the hell did you do?” Trevor snaps, grabbing Alucard’s collar with his free hand.

“I—”

“I don’t care, just get the hell out of my house!”

Chaviva coughs a little in Trevor’s hand, and immediately, Trevor’s rage wears off. He turns away from Alucard, towards Chaviva and cradles her to his cheek.

“Sweetheart,” he weeps, rocking her.

“Sypha!”

She had collapsed before the Elder could do anything. She tries reaching her, touching her awake, but Sypha does not move. The cursed young woman beside her doesn’t move. Both their minds are trapped behind a veil Iolanda can’t part, and she has to draw back for now and trust in Sypha.

“Baby,” Trevor cries, rocking Chaviva gently against him. She’s unconscious, breathing raggedly like she’s contracted pneumonia. He tugs on one of her tiny hands and kisses her curled fingers. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

He kisses her head and rocks her gently in his seat until his sobs hush both of them to sleep.

This is strange.

Sypha’s seen beasts and nightmares walk the earth, but to walk in a nightmare is completely different. She’s not afraid. In fact, she’s filled with a peaceful calm, but there’s something unsettling about a sky that changes color with every second, about crystals and rocks and substances that only look like those two things running jagged across the landscape, about…

About a presence she recognizes.

Dracula’s essence is somewhere here, and with that Sypha realizes this curse was not something as mundane as the evil eye or a potion strung together by a magician. She remembers the clouds of skulls that erupted from Dracula’s dying body and realizes that this is its consequence.

 _There will be dozens more I claim_.

Sypha keeps walking. Dracula is dead, but he still lives in some perverse way. It seems there’s no rest for the undead.

Eventually she shifts through curling black leaves and red grasses and finds a young girl.

“Daniela,” Sypha calls gently. She has the same face as the young woman passed out on the floor of her family’s humble cottage.

The girl, whose hands have been tremoring over her ears in fright, finally drop and she jerks around to look at Sypha. Daniela is crying, her face puffy and red.

“Who are you?” she cries out.

“I only want to help you,” Sypha says, stretching out her arm. The distance between her and Daniela feels so much wider than it actually is. “Come here.”

It’s a simple curse, really, now that Sypha understands what it is. Threads and strands running in tangled patterns that need to be undone. Curses, she’d tried to explain once to Trevor, were like magic knots, places where magic was trapped and uncomfortable, and the solution was as simple as untying a cord.

Daniela’s dreamscape shifts almost immediately as she does. First, the girl fades into smoke and a smile, and then the already nonsensical world loses hold. It shatters, slipping out of place, and then crumbles entirely, like dried dirt being crushed in an eager toddler’s hand.

Trevor and Sypha’s home hadn’t started out that way. It had been a temporary place to stay, when traveling was no longer an option for Sypha, whose pregnancy was beginning to take its toll on her body.

The first trimester, she had intractable vomiting. Something Alucard had a fancy name for that Trevor couldn’t remember—some medical term he’d read in what remained of his mother’s journals. Regardless of what it was called, it was a severe form of morning sickness, probably brought on by the fact that Sypha was pregnant with twins. It meant that her vomiting would not ebb away after a few weeks, but could possibly remain with her into the second trimester.

Everything she’d eat, she’d vomit right back up.

“Sypha, we may have to terminate this pregnancy,” Alucard said to her one evening. She was curled in a comfortable spot on the floor, leaning against Trevor.

“No,” she cried out weakly.

“Sypha, you’re not eating anything,” Trevor insisted.

Sypha refused. In the end, she made it to her second trimester and the vomiting ebbed away. For a while, she felt well enough to travel again. But the morning they’d decided to start on the road again, Sypha had been bedridden with a high blood pressure reading. Her feet became so swollen she could hardly walk. Trevor and Alucard were at her hands nearly every minute of the day.

“Eat this.” Trevor couldn’t remember what he’d given her, considering all the goddamn things Alucard had been giving her. But Sypha would take it without question, and as long as Sypha didn’t wake up dead the next morning, Trevor was hardly pressed to question him.

“There are bubbles in her urine.”

Trevor huffed. “Why are you looking at my wife’s urine?”

Alucard’s eyebrows knitted together. “I’m trying to make sure she doesn’t fucking die, Trevor. She could have a seizure,” he added when Trevor opened his mouth to argue.

At that, Trevor glanced back to Sypha laid out on the bed. He’d never seen her like that. Even when she was sick or injured, she walked it off. This frightened him, more than any battle to the death or night raid ever could. He suddenly forgot Alucard’s presence and crouched beside the bed, leaning over a weary Sypha.

“Why’d you have to go and get pregnant?” he sobbed into her sleeve.

She flicked his temple. “Who impregnated me?”

Trevor lifted his head and frowned at her weak smile.

“Don’t worry, Trevor,” she assured. “The legendary Belnades isn’t going to go out that easily.”

And she didn’t. As her delivery approached and as Alucard fed her medication, Sypha was able to get out of bed and resume her daily activities. Traveling remained on hold, however, and Sypha didn’t protest the matter. She didn’t particularly fancy giving birth on the road, not when there weren’t any Speakers around.

Her midwife was a Speaker she’d called. She didn’t trust anyone outside her community with something as delicate as this, and while Alucard was knowledgeable enough about medicine theoretically, he was still ignorant of it practically.

“Did you know—ow,” Sypha rambled in between contractions. “That Speakers have a lower mortality rate during childbirth?”

As much as Trevor hated her speaking when he thought it’d be better for her to stay quiet, he couldn’t deny that talking made her forget she’d been trapped in the same place for the last eight months. So despite the worried look on his face, he tried to respond to Sypha’s words as intelligently as possible.

“Uh-huh,” he said.

But if Sypha had planned on explaining why that was to Trevor, she wasn’t able to, because she went into labor right then.

Alucard was forced to stand outside, despite insisting that he knew something of childbirth from assisting with his mother.

“Alucard, I do _not_ care how versed you are in obstetrics,” Sypha heaved between contractions when Alucard protested the matter. “We are not at the level of friendship where I’ll allow you to stare at my expanding vagina for the next six hours.”

When she put the issue so crudely, Alucard had left, muttering and blushing to himself, and Trevor never had to hear another word about how she’d let “that oaf of her husband in the room and not me.”

Amidst all this, Sypha’s midwife—Mia, if Trevor had understood Sypha’s grunts correctly—had been coaching Sypha in between outbursts to breathe.

“You’re almost completely dilated, Sypha. A few more minutes and you’ll have to start pushing.”

And she did. Through all the pain and tears and grunts, she did. And Trevor couldn’t decide what about her made him prouder: the fact that she endured so much torment throughout her pregnancy without so much as a pessimistic thought, or the mountains of demons she could slay without breaking a sweat. He loved her, and he would love her forever, and he wanted to tell her all this, but Mia had just said the baby was crowning and he didn’t want to interrupt her pushing.

After a grueling ten hours, Sypha gave birth to their first child Isa, a healthy baby boy (though Sypha insisted not labeling him when he was still barely sentient). Mia cut the cord and handed the baby to her, which Sypha received with an eager smile.

“Wait, where’s the other one?” Trevor suddenly asked.

“It’ll be another few minutes before the head descends and she has to push again.”

“You mean they don’t just come out all at once?” Trevor exclaimed.

“They’re babies, not poop,” Sypha responded, ignoring Mia’s eye roll. “Although, don’t glance down because there is some beneath me.”

“So that’s what that smell is.”

Sypha laughed weakly and then turned her laugh into a sob.

“It smells so bad,” she whined. “I can’t even get up and run away. At least you can.”

“But I won’t,” Trevor promised, kissing her cheek. “I won’t ever run away no matter how bad your shit smells.”

Sypha laughed again. “That would be so romantic if I weren’t covered in every body fluid I’ve ever produced.”

Ten minutes later, Sypha delivered Chaviva, their second child, who came out leaner and louder than her fat, sleeping sibling.

“She’s so much smaller than Isa,” Trevor fussed, rocking her to sooth her.

“I’m less worried about her,” Mia replied. “She’s been kicking and screaming in the womb, so she’ll be fine outside it. It’s the healthier ones who tend to suffer more since they’re used to being pampered and warm.”

Trevor placed Chaviva gently in Sypha’s other arm, where Sypha marveled at her daughter.

“They’re both so ugly,” Sypha said affectionately.

“Oh, thank God, I thought I was just a terrible father for thinking that.”

Mia looked between both parents as if she wanted to say something. She opened her mouth, closed it and then opened it again to say something entirely different.

“Sypha, I need you to push one last time.”

“Wait, are there _more?_ ”

Sypha slapped both her hands to her face and giggled. The force of her laugh apparently exerted enough abdominal force for Mia, because she didn’t ask again for Sypha to push. Something slopped to the floor, and a stream of blood followed behind it.

Mia curled the rope of the cord around her hand and placed it to the side. She spent a few seconds staring between Sypha’s legs, and Trevor had to force himself not to say anything.

“There aren’t any lacerations in need of suturing so that’s good.”

But Trevor didn’t particularly care about Mia’s clinical assessment of Sypha’s state, because at that point, Sypha’s head lolled against his shoulder and she went unconscious.

“Sypha!” Trevor shook her. “Sypha!”

“Check her pulse,” Mia ordered.

He was about to, before Sypha let out a loud snore.

“Oh my God,” he said. “She’s asleep.”

Mia snorted. “Well, she’s exhausted herself. The labor was long and she’s lost a lot of blood. She’ll be fine but we’ll have to wake her in a little while to feed the children.”

Trevor curled his fingers through Sypha’s hair. She smelled and looked the worst she had in her life—pale, from anemia, hair disheveled from neglect, dirt and grime covering her face from the last day of labor. But for the first time in the last few months, Trevor felt a sense of relief wash over him. Her pregnancy had been so precarious. It was finally over.

“That was awful.”

Trevor shifts to the voice behind him. He’s no longer in those memories of Sypha’s pregnancy and he’s not in his living room. Chaviva is in his arms exactly the way she had been when he’d fallen asleep, but the world around them looks as fantastic as the landscapes in all those mythology books Sypha would read to him.

Sypha stands in front of him, a hand over her hip. She concludes her point with a wide smile, but Trevor is anything but amused at the sight of her.

“Sypha,” he sobs, pulling Chaviva close to his chest. “I don’t know what I did—I’m stupid! Look at what happened to her—” Sypha holds up a hand to shush him.

“She’s all right, Trevor.”

Count on Sypha to handle everything, even in his dreams. She places a hand over Chaviva’s forehead, and with the familiar blue glow of her magic, Chaviva comes back to life, giggling up at her father.

Trevor’s shoulders droop in relief.

“The spell was right,” she says with a giggle, putting her finger in Chaviva’s hands to play with. “But Alucard’s no magician. He made it too strong.”

“Is that the spell you cast to keep her in check?”

“No. I don’t need to. I think her personality only comes out around you.”

“Great,” Trevor says sarcastically with a sigh. Sypha giggles.

“So what the hell is this place?” he goes on.

“I’m not sure. But I think…this is Dracula’s curse.”

“What? Why would he curse some village girl?”

“I don’t think it’s meant to be purposeful. He said he would claim dozens more.”

“Only dozens? Well, that shouldn’t be too bad then. Compared to the genocide of humanity.”

Sypha pouts.

“What?” Trevor exclaims.

“Trevor, be serious.”

“I _am_ being serious.”

“Whatever,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I managed to get the curse off Daniela. I’ll be home soon. Say hello to Alucard for me.”

Try as he might, Trevor really couldn’t hide anything from his wife. All it took was a second of hesitation and a glance for her to realize he was hiding something.

“Trevor, what did you do to Alucard?”

“Relax!” he says, recoiling back from her furrowed brow. “I didn’t kill him or anything! I just kicked him out of the house!”

“Why?”

“He’s the one who put the spell on Chaviva, and it’s not like he was any help anyway!”

“Trevor!”

“What?” he whines. Another second of her frown, and he relents. “Fine, fine, I’ll tell him to come back. Sorry,” he adds with a frown of his own.

“It’s okay.” When Sypha finally smiles and kisses his cheek, Trevor wants to melt and die of happiness. He’s been deprived of her for over a week now.

Sypha wraps her hands around his arm then and leads him down a winding road to nowhere. Trevor hears the crunch of grass and gravel underneath his feet, but he can’t feel it. It’s strange. The world around him changes suddenly and he forgets what it was before just as quickly as it disappears. But the feel of Sypha’s arm is constant. He leans his head against the top of hers.

There are no parting words between them. Like any dream, it dissolves swiftly and without warning. The last thing he feels is Sypha squeezing his hand before he wakes up with a jerk in the chair he’d fallen asleep in.

“Chaviva,” he gasps. How much of that was really a dream?

When he sees Chaviva giggling and smiling up at him like nothing had ever happened, he realizes Sypha had really spoken to him. He sighs with relief, kisses Chaviva’s forehead and drifts back to sleep.

“Europe’s greatest magician is home!”

Trevor hears the door bang open around the same time at this outburst and briefly prays that Sypha hasn’t smashed the handle into pieces. His second thought is the sinking realization that he’s really become the homemaker in this relationship. His third is, _my wife is home!_

Sypha stops at the end of the hallway, hands on her hips. “Who missed me?”

Chaviva wiggles in Trevor’s arms, reaching out for her mother.

“Mama!” she squeals.

The next three seconds (Alucard would later complain they were the longest three seconds of his life) consist of Trevor and Sypha staring at their daughter.

Behind him, Alucard opens his mouth to say, “Is that—“ but is quickly shushed by Sypha, who’s outburst is far louder.

“Is that the first time she’s said that?” she asks.

Trevor hardly has time to finish the “yes” that comes out of his mouth, before the house is filled with Sypha and Trevor’s excited screeches.

“I shouldn’t have come back,” Alucard complains over their screams.

After what Alucard would later describe as eons, Sypha and Trevor finally calm down enough to continue a normal conversation. Sypha and Alucard exchange niceties while Trevor swings his daughter around in his arms, singing, _“You said your first word!”_

Isa comes to life in his cot when he sees his mother. He wiggles and babbles, reaching his arms out towards Sypha.

“You know, Sypha,” Alucard says as Isa lays his head on his mother’s shoulder. “I was going to suggest you have Isa seen by a doctor, because he’s really not active at all.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Alucard.” Sypha pats Isa’s back. “I used to be like that when I was an infant. It’s only because Isa’s an extremely powerful magician. He has to sleep off all that power.”

“He’s _what_!”

Trevor halts mid-dance with his jaw agape. If Sypha had thought any less of him, she might have expected him to drop Chaviva.

“Oh, yes. I thought you knew.”

Alucard refrains from saying something to Trevor’s shocked stance, to his ever gratitude. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Chaviva slaps her hands together excitedly and giggles.

The children go to sleep with little trouble. (Save for Chaviva regurgitating half her dinner onto Alucard’s shirt. “She’s just as charming as you,” he remarks to Trevor, which gets him a kick under the table. This quickly dissolves into Alucard and Trevor flying at each other over the table, and Sypha has to threaten both of them with magic to shut up. But aside from that, hardly any incident.)

To Sypha’s relief, both men in the room look too tired to continue an argument. She sets her cup of tea down and pauses for effect. Trevor and Alucard have been her friends for years now and know when she’s about to make an announcement. They stare at her expectantly.

“As I told Trevor before, the curse on this woman. It was no mumblings of a malicious neighbor. This came from Dracula.”

“Wait,” Alucard interrupts. “When did you speak to Trevor about this?”

“In a dream,” Trevor answers half-heartedly, chin in hand, playing with a piece of fuzz that came off his sleeve.

“A dream? How’d you manage to connect this idiot to your mind?”

Sypha presses her eyes shut and tries not to snap. “Please,” she says, but is quickly drowned out by their bickering.

“Well, this idiot can actually take care of a child unlike you, so maybe you ought to give me a little respect.”

“Yes, your children take to you, what an extraordinary achievement,” Alucard says sarcastically.

“Both of you shut up, or I’ll set Chaviva on you,” Sypha snaps. “Can we focus?”

Trevor grins wide at Sypha. “It’s hard to focus with you looking so pretty in the candlelight.”

Alucard gags behind his hand.

“Thank you, Trevor. You are right, but unfortunately you’ll have to find some way around that because what I’m about to say is important.”

Finally, the two of them have no quips to interrupt Sypha with and she can say her piece.

“I don’t think this is the last of the curse we’ll see. But we can’t stick around waiting for it to start affecting more people. We should research this.”

“The Belmont Hold, then?” Trevor asks.

“I don’t think any amount of research is going to lead us to answers, Sypha.” Alucard glances at Trevor’s defensive glare and continues, “But I suppose it won’t hurt to try.”

There’s a brief pause then. A rarity among the three of them when almost anything said sets either Alucard or Trevor off into a fight with one another. Sypha takes the opportunity to grab Trevor’s wrist and drag him to standing.

“We need to talk,” she says, pulling him across the threshold into the other room.

“Does this end with sex?” Trevor asks eagerly.

“Ugh,” Alucard responds, standing abruptly. “I should leave.”

“We’re not having sex,” Sypha answers promptly, which elicits a noise of disappointment from Trevor.

Alucard gives her a look she doesn’t bother to try and interpret. “I mean, I should leave anyway.”

“It’s getting dark,” Sypha insists. Probably the Speaker hospitality in her. Even though she knows Alucard is no stranger in this house. “At least stay the night. You can start for home in the morning.”

Alucard smiles. “You forget, Sypha, I’m half vampire, so night is like morning for me. I’d prefer to set off in the night, anyway. I get less head turns. Also,” he adds, his expression turning sour. “I’m afraid of your children.”

To that, neither Trevor nor Sypha have anything to say. They exchange glances and let Alucard make his way towards the door. He stops at the threshold, swivels around and addresses Trevor.

“You have beautiful children,” he says. “And the perfect wife.” Sypha straightens her back at that and crosses her arms in agreement. “Don’t ruin it.”

“Get out of my house, you bastard,” Trevor responds.

“Goodbye,” Sypha says, like a normal person. “Be safe.”

Alucard smiles again. “You, too.”

Sypha and Trevor watch Alucard disappear into the dark, the cool night air filling their lungs.

“We need to talk,” Sypha repeats, grabbing Trevor’s collar and dragging him into the living room before he can so much as protest. He manages to shut the door behind them before she has them both sitting cross-legged on the floor, warmed by a fire. Sypha takes both his hands into her lap and squeezes.

“We’re going tomorrow,” she declares.

Trevor gives her a questioning look.

“Okay, end of talk. Time to sleep.”

“Wait, wait, hold on!” Trevor protests. “Where are we going? And how?”

“We’re going back on the road. I’m sick of being stuck in one place. I’m finally well enough to continue journeying, so we can do that now.”

“All right, but hold on, Sypha.” He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “We don’t have a horse. I sold it when you were bedridden. And we need to pack. And you know…We need to figure out how to integrate kids into this.”

“Figure out what?” Sypha frowns and crosses her arms. “Speakers wander with children all the time. I know how to integrate kids.” When Trevor stares at her, admonished, she finally relents. “Okay, but you’re right about the other two things. So we’re getting a horse tomorrow.”

“Okay, wait, wait,” Trevor says, inching closer, as if that might somehow help him understand the intricacies of Sypha’s impossible mind. “Wait. Slow down, Sypha.” When she gives him a hard look, he backs off a little. “What’s…okay, what’s the rush?”

“Rush? There’s no rush.”

It’s Trevor’s turn to stare. “Sypha.”

“What? Okay, fine. I’m rushing.”

When she goes silent, he asks, “So…why?”

“Because…because I’m a Speaker! I’m not supposed to stay in one place, and I feel like…”

“You feel isolated from your people,” Trevor finishes in realization. “You keep them close now that they’re not here by following their traditions.” When Trevor so seamlessly reads her mind, she glances up at him in understanding. That he understood. Personally.

“Oh,” she says, embarrassed. “Trevor, I didn’t…” She reaches out for his hands. She’s grateful now, that after years of knowing one another, he doesn’t turn his head away in silence or shut down. Now, he keeps staring at her, letting himself feel the pain, trusting her with it.

She squeezes his fingers. “I haven’t been doing much to keep your traditions alive, have I?” She smiles, faintly. To think that Sypha would deprive him of his needs, when she’d prided herself on her sensitivity.

“It’s fine,” he says, squeezing back. And she knows he means it. “I’ve heard becoming parents does this to you.”

“We’ve been caught up in just trying to survive all this, I suppose we can forgive ourselves.”

Sypha shuffles her seat so that she’s next to Trevor. She circles her arms around his waist and leans her head over his shoulder.

Trevor sighs. “Don’t ever leave me again.”

“Leave you?” Sypha doesn’t turn her head but smiles, amused. “I was gone for a week.”

“Yes, don’t do it again.” It’s the closest thing to a command Trevor’s ever given her.

“Make me,” she teases.

“Oh, don’t underestimate me, Sypha.” He smiling when he turns his head towards her. “I’ll keep the most interesting books with me. Or maybe I’ll etch secret knowledge into my skin. You won’t ever leave me then.”

Sypha leans her chin into his shoulder. “Are you afraid I’ll leave you?”

“Sometimes,” he admits.

“You know I like you, Trevor.”

“I would assume so after having two children with you.”

The two of them burst into laughter. Despite Trevor’s admission of insecurity, there’s a level of confidence to his voice. He is afraid, deep down, in some ways, but he’s getting better. He begins to believe it more.

After a pause, Sypha says, “Maybe we don’t need to etch ancient knowledge into your skin. But we should write down your family bestiary again.”

“Write down?” Trevor pulls away from her and stares. “A Speaker, writing down knowledge? Didn’t we just finish talking about how you want to stick to your traditions?”

“Yes, but it’s not like I’m writing down Speaker knowledge. It’s my knowledge. And your traditions are important to me, too. For God’s sake, Trevor, don’t start crying,” she adds when she sees the sheen of wet overcome his eyes.

But it’s too late. Trevor begins to sob. _Grotesquely._ As endearing as it was to see him openly express himself in front of her, she still didn’t appreciate the mess he always made of her robes.

Sypha sighs and gestures for him to come near. “Come here,” she says when he hesitates. That was part of marriage, wasn’t it? Accepting that Trevor would ruin her clothes every time he cried.

“I love you,” she murmurs into his hair.

She hears Trevor sob something vaguely like “I love you, too” and she knows that everything between them would be all right.


End file.
